The device is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. The camera doesn’t store the pictures on film or digital medium, but prints a photo directly on a roll of cheap receipt paper while it is taking it. As this all happens very slow, people have to stay still for about three minutes until a full portrait photo is taken.

I really like the look of the prints! Could you take my picture Niklas?

“PING! – Augmented Pixel” is a seventies style video game, that adds a layer of digital information and old-school aesthetics to a video signal: A classic rectangular video game ball moves across a video image. Whenever the ball hits something dark, it bounces off. The game itself has no rules and no goal.

You could say that it’s just an augmented reality version of Pong. But Niklas just did a little more than just that. PING! – Augmented Pixel doesn’t use a computer to process the video signal and display the game. Niklas made a read hardware box with its own micro-controller. Impressive work!

Vektron Modular is a modular, algorithmic synthesizer made by Niklas Roy. The interesting part is that you can swap the microcontroller modules on which the compositions are stored. I whish I had the skills to build something like this.

It consists of four units, each capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet with an arrangement of fluorescent lights. The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

Petros Vrellis made these 2 pendulums which can draw. He used openFrameworks and some electronics to let the pendulums drop ink at the right time on the right spot. The first one is called “Irrational pendulum” and draws a square. The whole process takes around 6 minutes. The video shows this at a faster speed.

The second one is called “A drawing pendulum”. The pendulum need 15 minutes to draw this face.

Sketch-a-Move is a project by Anab Jain and Louise Klinker. They actually did this a few years ago. It’s a concept for a toy car that allows you to explore the unique relationships between small surface doodles and actual physical movements. If you draw a circle on the top of the toy car, it will move in a circle. If you draw a complicated spiral, the car will move in a spiral. They don’t explain how it actually works or could work, but it sure looks like fun.

Flyfire is project initiated by the SENSEable City Laboratory in collaboration with ARES Lab (Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory), both departments of the MIT. The goal is to transform any ordinary space into a highly immersive and interactive display environment. Its first implemetation is a display system using a large number of self-organizing micro helicopters. Each of them acts as smart pixel by using LED’s. Their position in 3D space and their color can be defined in real time, together they’re canvas able to display any kind of 2D imagery.

“X by Y” is Daniel Rozin his current exhibition at the Bitforms Gallery in New York, but it’s also the title of one of his interactive installations. “X by Y” is a little different than his other mechanical mirrors, this time he arranged forty-four wooden slats horizontally and vertically. Of course they are controlled by motors and react on camera input. The result is an interactive pattern / grid display.

A second new piece that he presents is “Rust Mirror”. It’s made of 768 oxidized steel tiles and works like most of his mechanical mirrors.

The third one is a piece from 2008: “Mirrors Mirror”. I know that I’ve posted it before but it is still great.

Last week, F.A.T. introduced the Graffiti Markup Language (GML), a new XML file type specifically designed for archiving graffiti tags. Of course it doesn’t make sense to only archive those tags, you should also be able to reproduce them. And that’s exactly what Golan Levin and Jeremy Ficca did. They wrote a small tool to translate the .GML files from 000000book.com into instructions for their industrial ABB IRB-4400 robot arm. If they now could place his robot on a truck like Evan Rothsuggested …
Here you can find some more details about the Robotagger.

Mobile Mobile is a Christmas installation at the Lost Boys international office in London. They used 50 old company cellphones to make this huge mobile. Each phone is controlled by a computer and has its own tone. When no one interacts with the sculpture, it plays “Carol of the Bells”. But you can also play with it. You can control it through this website or you can send a tweet with #lbitree and it will react to it. If you’re in London, you can just pop by at their office.
You might also like AKQA last years microwave oven piece.